


8ad dream

by Imherefinally



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, CPTSD examination and symptoms, Death, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 08:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19314436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imherefinally/pseuds/Imherefinally
Summary: Vriska had never been one for dreams. Prospit was fine, a welcome distraction, even. Same with the dream bubbles. Anything to avoid some real deep unconscious fuckery. Anything to keep from dreaming.





	8ad dream

Vriska had never been one for dreams. Prospit was fine, a welcome distraction, even. Same with the dream bubbles. Anything to avoid some real deep unconscious fuckery. Anything to keep from dreaming.

 

She used to stay up for hours and hours past the point of exhaustion so she would clip through the dream stage right to a dark and undisturbed sleep. This was just fine with her, when she went on the hunt for her lusus it would almost exhaust her to that point anyway.

 

In the game, there were no dreams. She was at her best there; well rested and also unbothered by some pesky memories.

 

When prospit exploded the dream bubbles took its place. They were… imperfect. Not so good for avoiding old memories. She loathed, absolutely loathed when the dream bubbles tried to tell her something. There was never any closure in those memories, not any that she asked for.

 

But it was fine. Better than real dreams. Better because she had no memories of real pain.

 

Whenever she was in enough pain, she could count on her brain to forget. No matter how hard she tried, or rather, didn’t try, anything worse than a buzz beast sting just didn’t stick around. She counted on it to make it through the worst parts of her life.

 

When her arm ripped off, she could remember how she reacted. She remembered the blood, the feelings, and the sudden one dimensional vision, but not the pain. A dream bubble could force her to relive what she remembered over and over, but never the pain.

 

After a few weeks on the meteor, she started dreaming again.

 

Between bubbles, or before them, or after, in the tiniest gaps the horror-terrors left, she was alone with her unconscious.

 

It was always the worst.

 

She coped with it like before, doing whatever she could to stay inside the bubbles and failing that to fall so hard into sleep that she skipped right through them. No one noticed, she’d become a master at hiding sleep deprivationover the years, and no one seemed to differentiate her insomniac outbursts from her regular personality.

 

She was proud. She was an excellent actor. She was upset. No one cared to dig around her ruse.

 

Months went by, and she’d avoided any significant periods of dreaming. She was getting tired though, like her body was shutting down. She tried coffee, and she lasted a couple more months before absolutely crumbling.

 

She isn’t like Terezi when sleep deprived, she just completely shuts down. Terezi lashes out, and Vriska expected to do the same, but one day she just, stopped.

 

Stopped working, stopped caring, like a switch was flipped in her head. A switch flipped from ‘I’m unsafe’ to ‘I’m safe’. Of course it was a mistake, but Terezi had her fingers in her hair, and she and Rose were talking about something so, so boring, and Kanaya’s blanket was on top of her, and she was warm, and she was safe, and she was happy and she hadn’t slept in days and she needed it and she couldn’t even think straight every thought just ran together; warm soft safe here love her soft warm-

 

It was the easiest thing to just fall asleep. To fall, and fall, to loosen the iron grip on reality she established ever since she was young, to trust in someone else, even briefly, to watch over her while she slept.

 

In between a complete dark sleep and the lowest of the dream bubbles was this tiny space where Vriska was alone. That by itself set her on edge. But it was ok, not too bad. Out of all her nightmares being alone wasn’t so bad as long as it didn’t last years and years and years and-

 

Then the pain started.

 

She had died once, and could remember the blood and the prospit and the Tavros, but her unconscious remembered the pain. She could bear it, she was strong, and she knew she would forget soon enough.

 

In the dream she felt her bones crushed under psionic impact. Fair enough, Medigo. She’d had worse. Then it happened again, and again. and again and again and aga-

 

She could feel each bone snap, hear it, trace the splinters. But she had dealt with this before and managed to turn it into the best decision of her entire fucking life.

 

The pain was excruciating, every second turning into years, but bleeding out was worse. She knew Tavros had failed, that despite her, oh god, begging, he didn’t have the strength to kill.

 

What a shame.

 

What a dying, fucking, shame.

 

She felt her organs shutting down. She felt mental darkness spread over her perception of her body. She felt cold. She wasn’t sure when it would kick in, the resurrection. God hood, immortality, was it worth this? Could it be worth this?

 

There was real fear in her. She felt the blood drain from her bones and her breathing stop for good and her heart struggle, struggle, she was choking and drowning and dying, she’s fucking dying-

 

Complete darkness envelops her. The resurrection doesn’t kick in in her dream, it just leaves her afloat in the tiniest space between life and death. No sensation can reach her, quiet embraces her, and she can’t find it in herself to care.

 

She doesn’t care if she died now for good. She doesn’t care what happens after she ascends, she doesn’t care about Aradia, or Tavros, or Karkat or Equius or oh god even Terezi she just doesn’t give a shit about anything anyone-

 

Her dream drops her into the meteor, intact.

 

Who even was that? A Vriska that didn’t care, that couldn’t fathom the worth of her iron fire balance, who trusted, and made the mistake to trust, someone, anyone, with the most important thing to ever happen to her. Who the fuck was that?

 

She messaged John. Or, she just finished messaging him. She can see her text on the monitor, flickering with the rest of the screen. She’s in her god garb, her normal shirt, her best shoes, her sneakers. She experiences two mirror events at once.

 

In one, she faces Tavros, ready to finally get her fucking revenge. In the other she faces Terezi, all dressed up in her stupid roleplaying outfit and high on justice and her seer powers. What a joke, both of them. They don’t know what it’s like to die.

 

Neither does Aradia, she decides. What, vaporized in one second? What a joke, what a joke. She probably didn’t even feel anything, why does she care so much about it? Her body exploded? Who cares? Bet she didn’t even feel it.

 

Terezi knows pain, but not like she does. She didn’t die like she did; slowly, steadily, fucking unhaltingly. Tavros doesn’t even know anything.

 

Kanaya might know, just because the hole in her torso was the size of her head and she had to drag herself back to the land of the living her-fucking-self. Vriska admired her for that, but even then, it just barely comes close to copying the shadow of her death.

 

It was spectacular, and she would have nothing less.

 

She knows that it’s a dream now, mirror realities’ll do that. And she’s fucking furious. How could she let this happen? Why was her subconscious torturing her? And why the FUCK does it care about Tavros?

 

When she puts people to sleep, it’s a straight plunge. No dreams, no thank you. It’s a fucking mercy, what she does. That kid Jade should thank her. Not bullshitting around in your brain’s regurgitated ramblings for HER victims, no thank you.

 

Oh, Tavros is charging at her.

 

Well she knows how this goes, she’s relived it often enough. He winds up, charges, and she skewers him like the toreador he wished he could be.

 

This time, there’s a shift. Right before the lance makes contact they switch places. She’s left staring at her own face as the lance impales her. It hurts, god it hurts like a BITCH!!!!!!!!

 

She opens her mouth to scream but brown blood spurts from between her teeth and as she looks down she sees the massive hole in her torso and the blood falling falling falling and here comes the darkness again and it’s cold it’s so cold-

 

The smirk on her alter deepens, then shifts abruptly. Looking down again she sees she’s impaled, this time from the back, this time from Terezi’s sword.

 

This isn’t a memory of hers, but she can still feel it, can feel her blood soak her god tier uniform. It’s wet. The world drains out of that point, dripping off the end of the sword. Her legs give out, and somewhere she can hear a final clock-chime ring out over paradox space. This isn’t, real…

 

Is it?

 

Her body falls, cascading off a cliff and into darkness. She clings to the pain to ground her, but she’s falling, falling. The clock rests immobile, and her senses drain away.

 

She’s thrown into consciousness with the same force she fell with.

 

She doesn’t… she doesn’t recognize anything. Doesn’t know where she is, but she knows she should. She knows where she is, but not really, like there’s a screen over her perception, like there’s something stopping it all from clicking.

 

Her hands crawl up to her shoulders. Her claws prick into her skin. She presses down, and the world gets a little more real as the pain courses through her. She-

 

Someone touches her-

 

has to do more, she doesn’t know where she is how she got there she’s in danger danger-

 

a hand tries to pry her claws out of her skin, she can feel the blood-

 

blood-

 

She can feel it slick between her fingertips. She can’t see, really, she looks but doesn’t see. She needs to feel something, anything, and the blood makes her feel real…

 

Her nails dig in further, and with a blood curdling screech she drags the cut across her shoulder blades, her upper arm, and out. Eight marks sting like hell across her senses, and she hones in on the feeling. Her eyes focus slightly and Terezi is trying to stop her from doing something.

 

Stop her from doing what?

 

Terezi’s hands burn on her skin. The pain and the calloused hands are way way way too much and she can’t vocalize it but she has to stop it has to stop she has to stop it-

 

She swipes at Terezi and that only makes her try harder to restrain her. Suddenly it’s not someone she knows on top of her, it’s some troll trying to kill her again. She fights back. She’s sloppy- it’s instinct- but her instincts were honed in fire, and they both tumble off the couch. Someone is trying to get her from behind and suddenly it’s two on one and she’s fighting for her life again just like back then.

 

It’s with dawning horror that she realizes that she’s back then. She promised she promised she promised, that she’d never ever be back there ever again she can’t go back no no no-

 

Something in the back of her mind pings her back to awareness, and she’s pinned against the floor. Her shoulders fucking hurt, and so does her face and her chest and oh fuck her heart is beating so fast she needs to get up get UP-

 

Kanaya has an iron grip. Some facet of otherworldly strength is nailing Vriska to the ground as Terezi struggles to contain her bucking legs. All the while she’s screaming, and it’s totally incoherent. Terezi can make out lines of begging and cursing that meld into each other, and fuck if her arm doesn’t hurt; Vriska got a good hit in before she even realized something was wrong.

 

Rose is no help physically, but Kanaya sent her off with a screech of “find Karkat” as soon as this whole thing started. She needs to get back, and soon. She needs to treat Vriska before she bleeds out.

 

Karkat sprints in ahead of Rose, calmly sliding into place right next to Vriska. He starts to shoosh her, and, it works? Slowly. Kanaya was always fascinated by this. She watched him trail a hand down her bloodstained face, and remembered a time he had to do this before. It was eerily similar.

 

The screaming gave way to sobbing, then quiet, raspy, breathing. Her whole body was drenched in sweat, and when it finally seemed like she caught her breath a full body shudder ripped through her.

 

“What’s happening?” She hissed out through clenched teeth.

 

When the panic released her she went limp. She let herself be moved to the counter, let her shirt be lifted off, let herself be patched up. Kanaya bandaged her back, Terezi cleaned the blood off her chest, and Rose got to work cleaning it out of her hair.

 

Vriska watched silently, obeying every request to move or stay still and feeling just so fucking exhausted. She watched the stitches go in, out, in, out, and tried to time her breathing with them in the hope that her heart would slow down.

 

The pain in her chest turned to an ache as the episode subsided. A searing phantom pain ripped through her once-missing-now-here arm, and the eye she lost and regained. She seized up, and felt the rippling tension crash over like a wave of trucks. She breathed through it, squeezing tears out of her eyes, and it too eventually stopped.

 

When she looked up Kanaya was tending to Terezi, and they were chatting in hushed tones, laughing. She would be jealous, but the feelings in her chest were muffled through layers of exhaustion. She felt a weight pull on her, gravity working too hard on her, and she couldn’t, didn’t even try to stop the tears that flowed silently down.

 

Rose moved from her hair to her undamaged shoulder skin and started kneading deep and hard. It relieved a bit of tension, and Vriska sighed.

 

After a moment, she said “You guys would be better off without me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“This isn’t,” she sighed, “I’m not normal.”

“I wouldn’t categorize any of us as ‘normal’.”

 

Vriska let the conversation lull. There’s no way Rose got it, she couldn’t. She can’t get it, not the way she does, the only one who knows anything about how bad it got was Kanaya, and even then she never told her enough. Never got vulnerable, ever.

 

“Look,” Rose pressed into a particularly tense muscle, and Vriska relaxed on reflex, “I knew you were incredibly dangerous when I met you. No matter what you think, we’re not stupid. We can handle whatever you happen to throw at us. We- I want to.”

 

Vriska shot a glance at Terezi. The blood was gone but the cuts… she should have held back, she should have known-

 

“If it happens again surely we are strong enough to deal with it.”

“‘If’? It will happen again.”

“Maybe. Maybe it would be less likely if you talked about it.”

 

Vriska rolled her eyes at the idea of one billion weird little “therapy” sessions. She doesn’t have the energy to say it, but it really won’t work on her, she’s sure of it.

 

There’s just no way she can articulate it, how it works, how it hurts, and she won’t let herself either. She’ll never trust anyone else to know, to have her back or tinker around in her brain. No thanks.

 

Instead of contemplating all the questions Rose is going to ask when this is all over, Vriska focuses on her fingers working deep into her muscles, not holding back. She always appreciated that about Rose, even with all the esoteric bull-shittery she never really held anything back.

 

She would be ruthless about it later, but now she was just as ruthless with the knotted tendons in her back, and the mechanical relaxation released so much hidden tension.

 

Tension that she’d been holding for weeks, years, forever. Part of her wanted to give in, to tell Rose everything and let her iron her out like just another dress Kanaya had made. She wanted to give herself over to them and let them draw out all the bad bits like glass splinters and sew her together and smooth her out and sand her rough edges down so she wouldn’t be so sharp to the touch but there was that stabbing fear, that after that change she wouldn’t recognize herself, that she would be someone else, and she would honestly rather die than let that happen.

 

Sometimes she wished she wan’t like this. It was always when she was tired, when her complex web of denial dropped and she could see clearly for just a moment. But, and this always comes around again, somewhere deep inside of her clings to the idea that she’ll die if she changes. Rose would say it’s not true, but she doesn’t understand it like she does.

 

When she reaches for her shirt a hand covers her own.

 

“It’s ruined-“

“Yeah but I want to put my shirt on now-“

“Vriska-“

“Please, just, please Kanaya I cant…”

 

She helps her with the shirt. The wounds on her shoulders make it hard to lift her arms but she gets it on. She feels a little bit normal but not enough, it’s just not enough.

 

“You want a hot shower?” Terezi wouldn’t look at her, she just fidgeted with the hem of her sleeve and said “It helps me when it gets bad.”

 

She nods and lets herself be led to the bathrooms. Everyone comes. It’s a fucking party, she guesses. Better there than not though; she’s afraid if she’s alone…

 

She doesn’t want to think about it.

 

She gets in the shower stall and takes off her blood soaked and claw torn clothes. Her hand freezes over the handle. There’s some… block, something that has to be right before she continues, but she doesn’t know what it is.

 

She shifts her feet, throws her clothes farther away, says some phrases that are burning in her mind under her breath, nothing. It won’t click and she needs to shower so fucking bad she’s gross all over and fuck she’s starting to shake again-

 

“Terezi?”

 

Terezi turns to her. Vriska’s face is poking out of the shower curtain. Her voice is meek and timid and tired, and it breaks her heart to hear it like this.

 

“Yeah?”

“I need,” she lets out a sigh, and looks away, “I need some help.”

 

She doesn’t respond, just nods and moves to her side. Her clothes come off and she turns the water on almost hot enough to boil, but not quite. Perfect. Vriska closes her eyes and lets the humid air bring her back to reality. She feels a finger trace the raw skin on her shoulder, and when she looks it’s Terezi, someone she could, should, recognize anywhere.

 

To return the gesture she moves a hand to cup Terezi’s cheek, and runs her thumb along a scratch right under her eye. She seems to accept the apology. She helps her clean the rest of the blood off, and the drain tinges cerulean and teal as reality slowly comes creeping back in.

 

“Terezi?”

“Hmm?”

“Kiss me, please I-“

 

She doesn’t let her finish.

 

They just stand there for a moment, lips flush together. They’re both too tired to do anything else but stand there and feel the water wash over them and feel each other’s warmth. It’s enough to bring Vriska back into the moment. It’s enough to pull Terezi away from the edge of panic she’d been teetering on for the past hour.

 

When they get out dry towels and clean clothes are waiting for them. Vriska suspects that she’ll never see that torn shirt again, but that’s alright.

 

When they dry off they find Rose and Kanaya in the kitchen. They’re making hot drinks. Terezi takes a coco, with salt dear god why- and Vriska takes a dark tea.

 

They settle into a… tent? pile? A sort of soft-furniture-and-pillow-construction that teeters dangerously when they enter, but settles once they’re all inside. Rose seems proud of it. Kanaya seems proud of Rose. They sit for a while in silence that gives way to idle chat and just, normal fucking conversation. It feels so good. She feels grounded. When she finally speaks it’s on her terms, and she knows she’s back in control.

 

They end up layered on each other, drinks long finished and warmth much appreciated. Her head is on Rose, and her fingers are in her hair, moving, caressing her horns, slowly trailing to the points to the base. Then her fingers are in her hair, still a little bit wet from the shower, and her touch is just barely there. It trails to her ear, and a hand moves to cup her face. Fingertips brush the skin of her cheek, her jaw, and they go up to the horns again. Down, to her hair face face hair horns, up soft warm horns down slow breathe safe. Her eyes close, Kanaya leans over to plant a soft kiss on her forehead. Rose doubles over and kisses her mouth, and Vriska lets out a long, slow, sigh, and closes her eyes.

 

It’s going to go back to the way it was when she goes outside. At least, if she doesn’t try, and she can’t even fathom the effort it’ll take to try. Right now she’s tired, and comfy, and maybe even safe, and things can be ok for just a little bit longer as far as she’s concerned.


End file.
